Podcast Hosting

Podbean.com: http://www.podbean.com/

I decided to sign up for podcasting at Podbean.com because the homepage advertised the ability to publish your own podcasts as well as collect favorite podcasts into one site. The sign up process was quick and easy. After signing up I needed to go to my email in order to retrieve the password. Once I was signed in with my username and password, I was able to change the password to something more familiar by going to “settings.” The first thing that I noticed about the site was the vast amount of podcasts advertised on the page. There are featured podcasts, promoted podcasts, popular podcasts, most played podcasts of this week, this month, or of all time. I found a few podcasts that I liked and subscribed to them so that they are all in one place for listening (My Subscriptions). I like the way that the podcasts are organized and wished that I had searched podcasts through this site when evaluating educational podcasts. Each podcasts has a short description, icon, tags, and genre type. I found a podcast that reviewed young adult literature and subscribed to it hoping that it will be a useful model to my own students when they review books. I am hoping to have my students use a podcast to critique books, give author interviews, or create book talks.
Another great feature of Podbean.com is the ability to publish your own podcast. However, I do not think that you are able to actually create the podcast on their website. Instead, users can create a podcast using Podomatic or Audacity and upload the file onto Podbean.com in order to share the podcasts. The podcasts are displayed in a way that is very similar to a blog. Each episode has a title, description, and tags. The episodes are added to the user’s page and can be viewed and reviewed by other Podbean users.